Discidium
by bsl
Summary: Drunk driver, they said. As if hearing it afterwards would explain anything that had happened in the hours before. The room was sterile, the chairs hard. Your daughters fidgeted like caught fish in their seats to temper their discomfort. Their cuts were bandaged; a broken arm set, and your attention was solely placed on the member of your family who wasn't present.


I feel like this gets lost in my Minutiae collection and I'm so proud of it, so I'm removing it from there and posting it separately.

This is the worst, I am the worst.  
Prompt: "You're going to make it. Just stay awake."

In the words of Tina Belcher: Non-canonical! Not in canon with my other stories featuring Lian and Mica.

* * *

Drunk driver, they said. As if hearing it afterwards would explain anything that had happened in the hours before. The room was sterile, the chairs hard. Your daughters fidgeted like caught fish in their seats to temper their discomfort. Their cuts were bandaged; a broken arm set, and your attention was solely placed on the member of your family who wasn't present.

It had happened in an instant. You'd barely had time to react, but she had always been faster. Your name erupted from her throat in a sharp bark. Two shadows came into focus in the back seat, one covering each of the panicked nine-year-olds like a cloak - ready to take the hit.

You didn't understand why she didn't call three.

As you tried to turn the wheel away her hand snapped out and turned it inwards sharply. The hood of the car made contact with her door first, instead of crushing the back and your sandy-haired little girl into non-existence. The metal collapsed like paper, it creased and crumpled into her body, smothered and stole her. The tension shattered the window, and tiny raindrops of glass showered over her face and shoulders as the car lurched to the left. Glass and plastic and steel grated against each other in a dissonant opera. You heard an acute screech of pain from the back seat, quickly followed by the ashes of a disappearing shadow creeping into your periphery. Smoke, or steam, or something billowed up like storm clouds from under the hood of the other vehicle. The front end was mangled and wedged into the door as deep as bones. The forced fusion of useless metal slid to a stop, tyres screamed against the asphalt beneath, and you could barely bring yourself to breathe. Your knuckles were white with force as you clung desperately to the steering wheel.

"Mommy!"

The scream jarred your senses back into your body, and you could taste the blood and burning plastic that hung heavily on the air. You dragged your head over your shoulder, your body like wet sandbags. The second shadow dissolved into grey dust, and the sight of both girls brought bile to your lips. They were littered with cuts from flying glass, tracks of blood and tears on their cheeks. Lian cradled her right arm as tentatively as you had first cradled her. Her bottom lip quivered and her eyes stared blankly through the seat in front of her.

You turned slowly, coiled like prey in a hunter's sight. You knew this would not end well. Your eyes, dry and gritty, took in your wife's battered body forced unnaturally into the seat. Her blood seeped into the light fabric like spider webs and she turned her head to you, her eyes dazed and unfocused. "Get them… out." She breathed so lightly that her words were almost carried away by the breeze. Immediately you released your seatbelt.

You poured yourself from the car, grasping for footing as you turned and pulled open the unbroken rear door. Your dark-haired daughter cried harder, "Mommy!" Her voice shattered as she wailed, but your arm coiled firmly around her waist and pulled her struggling frame from the car and into your arms. The blonde child on the other side of the seat was static, her eyes watching dark red stains grow on the back of her mother's seat. "Xiǎohuā, get out of the car." Your voice was firm, but the girl sat still, staring, barely breathing. Mica still struggled and sobbed against your grip. "Lian!" Your shout cracked clearly through the white noise and her head snapped around, her disparate irises locking onto yours. "Come here, baby." Softer this time, you muttered the words laced with reassurances you didn't have, and she gingerly shuffled across the seat littered with crystalline shards. Her legs shook as her feet touched the ground and you put a solid arm out to steady her, not daring to pick her up and risk hurting her more. You carefully shepherded her to a sidewalk peppered with a useless and gawping audience.

You put Mica down beside her twin and they shuffled closer, instinctively folding their palms together like origami. "Stay here." You told them, and they knew not to argue. They stood like stone angels on the street corner, surrounded by complacent witnesses who were suddenly very aware of the scared little girls with furry, pointed ears.

You ran back to the smoking wreck. Your feet felt slow and heavy, your bones turned to concrete within your shoes. Creeping back into your seat, you desperately grasped at your wife's hand and pulled it to your lips, pressing a hot kiss to cold skin. You brushed back her dark bangs and eyes fluttered open, her eyelids protesting the notion of movement. "Blake…" Her name was all that could pass your lips, your throat choked shut by an invisible rope that threatened to suffocate you. "Please, kitten. Stay with me."

"I can't… feel anything." Her lips rolled with the words but the sound barely came. You saw the jagged debris pressing through the flesh of her abdomen, painted red with blood. Your arm ached.

"You're going to make it. Just stay awake." You kissed her forehead and stroked her hair, her hand never left your grip. "Please stay awake." The rope around your throat tightened again, and your heart clenched in your chest. "Please don't leave me."

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Somebody pulled you out of the car, and you knelt sobbing in the street, shards of glass and metal stuck in your skin. You were pushed into a police car and your daughters huddled beside you as it raced behind the ambulance that wailed and screeched through the streets. You saw her wheeled into the hospital, and you tried to follow her, but officers rebuffed you and forced you in another direction with the girls. You remembered Lian's arm, and cursed yourself, but your heart was torn into shreds. Any stray remnants of sense were flying out of your mind faster and faster the longer Blake was away from you. The salt of your tears dried to form a mask of stupor, and all you could do was watch as small wounds were washed and stitched; a cast and sling carefully placed on a tiny arm.

You sat, and you waited, and no words uttered made any impact on your psyche. You wished and hoped and prayed to nothing and everything that she would be okay: that you'd see her quiet smile, watch her read with Lian, and backflip with Mica, make her breakfast, and that none of this had ever happened. The girls descended into a hush which drew you into reality. You looked up. Green scrubs.

"Mrs Xiao Long?"

"Yes?"

"I'm so sorry."


End file.
